TOLEDO, Ohio - NASA will honor Eugene Francis "Gene" Kranz with thepresentation of an Ambassador of Exploration Award for hisinvolvement in the U.S. space program. Kranz will receive the awardduring a ceremony at 2 p.m. CST on Dec. 6 at the Central CatholicHigh School.Snip----------------------------------------------------------------

The Apollo missions are long past, and hopefully soon a new history will becreated with humans on the Moon.It is good to remember those that helped make it happen before and hopefullythis will interest the generation coming up to help in the next quest.

What are your kids thinking about?- LRK -

----------------------------------------------------------------http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/AofEphotos.htmlNASA Ambassador of Exploration AwardThe Ambassador of Exploration Award recognizes the sacrifices anddedication of the Apollo, Gemini and Mercury astronauts. Each astronautor their surviving families will be presented a lunar sample, part ofthe 842 pounds of moon rocks and soil returned during the six lunarexpeditions from 1969 to 1972.

An inscription describes the rock as "a symbol of the unity of humanendeavor and mandkind's hope for a future of peace and harmony."Snip----------------------------------------------------------------

Will this generation of students coming up get similar awards?Talk it up.

TOLEDO, Ohio - NASA will honor Eugene Francis "Gene" Kranz with thepresentation of an Ambassador of Exploration Award for hisinvolvement in the U.S. space program. Kranz will receive the awardduring a ceremony at 2 p.m. CST on Dec. 6 at the Central CatholicHigh School. Kranz is a 1951 graduate of Central Catholic. The awardwill remain at the Toledo school for display. Reporters who wouldlike to attend the ceremony should contact Michele Jurek(mjurek@centralcatholic.org) at 419-255-2306, ext. 148, by 3 p.m. onDec. 5.

The award is a moon rock encased in Lucite and mounted for publicdisplay as inspiration to a new generation of explorers who will helpreturn humans to the moon and eventually travel on to Mars andbeyond. The rock is part of the 842 pounds of samples collectedduring the six Apollo lunar expeditions from 1969 to 1972.

NASA is giving the Ambassador of Exploration Award to the firstgeneration of explorers in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spaceprograms for realizing America's vision of going to the moon. NASAalso is recognizing several key individuals who played significantroles in the early space programs.

Kranz worked on NASA's Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space missions.Kranz was the lead flight director during the Apollo 13 mission. Anexplosion aboard the spacecraft during Apollo 13 required Kranz andother team members to help resolve the crisis and safely bring theastronauts back to Earth. Kranz was a co-recipient of thePresidential Medal of Freedom for the Apollo 13 Mission. Forinformation about Central Catholic High School, visit:

*Amazon.com*In 1957, the Russians launched /Sputnik/ and the ensuing space race.Three years later, Gene Kranz left his aircraft testing job to join NASAand champion the American cause. What he found was an embryonicdepartment run by whiz kids (such as himself), sharp engineers andtechnicians who had to create the Mercury mission rules and procedurefrom the ground up. As he says, "Since there were no books written onthe actual methodology of space flight, we had to write them as we wentalong."

Kranz was part of the mission control team that, in January 1961,launched a chimpanzee into space and successfully retrieved him, andmade Alan Shepard the first American in space in May 1961. Just twomonths later they launched Gus Grissom for a space orbit, John Glennorbited Earth three times in February 1962, and in May of 1963 GordonCooper completed the final Project Mercury launch with 22 Earth orbits.And through them all, and the many Apollo missions that followed, GeneKranz was one of the integral inside men--one of those who bore theresponsibility for the /Apollo 1/ tragedy, and the leader of the "tigerteam" that saved the /Apollo 13/ astronauts.

Moviegoers know Gene Kranz through Ed Harris's Oscar-nominated portrayalof him in /Apollo 13/, but Kranz provides a more detailed insider'sperspective in his book /Failure Is Not an Option/. You see NASA throughhis eyes, from its primitive days when he first joined up, through the1993 shuttle mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, his lastmission control project. His memoir, however, is not high literature.Kranz has many accomplishments and honors to his credit, including thePresidential Medal of Freedom, but this is his first book, and he's nota polished author. There are, perhaps, more behind-the-scenes detailsand more paragraphs devoted to what Cape Canaveral looked like than thegeneral public demands. If, however, you have a long-standingfascination with aeronautics, if you watched /Apollo 13/ and wantedmore, /Failure Is Not an Option/ will fill the bill. /--Stephanie Gold/

Snip==============================================================http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_KranzEugene Francis "Gene" Kranz (born 17 August 1933) is a retired NASAflight director and manager. Kranz served as a flight director duringthe Gemini and Apollo programs, and is best known for his role in savingthe crew of Apollo 13. He is also famous for his trademark flattophairstyle, and the wearing of vests (waistcoats) of different styles andmaterials during missions for which he acted as flight director. Kranzhas received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

[118]Eugene F. Kranz, flight director, is shown at his console on May 30,1965, in the Mission Operations Control Room in the Mission ControlCenter at Houston during a Gemini-Titan IV simulation to prepare for thefour-day, 62-orbit flight. (NASA Photo S-65-22203.)

[119]From a very young age, Eugene F. Kranz developed a unique interest inspace flight. Born in Toledo, Ohio, on August 17, 1933, Kranz formerlydeclared his interest in the subject by writing a high school thesiswhich explored the possibilities of flying a single-stage rocket to theMoon. However, after graduating from Parks College of St. Louis,Missouri, with a BS in Aeronautical Engineering, Kranz's interestsbecame more down to earth as he shifted from space travel to aviation.

[131]Gene Kranz working at his flight director's console in the MissionOperations Control Room at Houston circa 1965. (NASA Photo S-65-60057.)

Interesting results from spacecraft and rovers at Mars and the eveningnews isn't even turned on to see if they are in the news.I have been helping with 5th and 6sth grade homework and putting up withvideo games.http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/

Here in the USA, Thanksgiving has come and gone. The stores are sellingChristmas Trees, and I'll turn 70 New Years Eve. Mom is 97. The daysare getting shorter.

Many of you are doing interesting things and a time to be excited. Justnot enough hours in the day.

Have a daughter in Iraq and her kids will be glad when she is homesafe. She lost three men in her platoon the other day. Nice that wehave the Internet and e-mail to communicate with but not the same asbeing state side. Maybe those that go to a Lunar Colony or a MartianBase will do better at getting along. Seems we should practice that inthe here and now.

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) successfully demonstratedproduction of stereo movies (3 dimensional movies) of the Moon surfaceby using stereoscopic images obtained with the Terrain Camera (TC)onboard KAGUYA on Nov. 3, 2007 (Japan Standard Time, JST). Thisverification was performed as part of the initial check out of missioninstruments onboard "KAGUYA" (SELENE), which was injected into theMoon's orbit at an altitude of about 100 km. These are the first 3-Dmovies of the Moon including its polar areas with an aerial resolutionof 10 meters.Anaglyph images*1 and movies were also produced.

Snip==============================================================http://spaceweather.com/SOLAR WIND DRIES VENUS: Europe's Venus Express spacecraft has made animportant discovery: the solar wind dries out Venus. Unlike Earth, Venushas no global magnetic field to deflect particles from the sun; whensolar wind hits Venus it erodes the upper atmosphere. Hydrogen andoxygen atoms fly into space, removing from Venus the chemical buildingblocks of water. The process makes an already hellish planet even worse.Get the full story from the ESA.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

This is so good. Do go look at the High Definition TV images of Earth.- LRK -

What a site to see if you were on your honeymoon at a Lunar Hotel,looking out at Earth.Put your quarter in the telescope and get a close up view.Watch Earth turn to see all in 24 hours, +- a few minutes, and see theSun come up and go down in a months time.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and NHK (JapanBroadcasting Corporation) have successfully performed the world's firsthigh-definition image taking of an Earth-rise* by the lunar explorer"KAGUYA" (SELENE,) which was injected into a lunar orbit at an altitudeof about 100 km on October 18, 2007 (Japan Standard Time. Followingtimes and dates are all JST.)

The Apollo project was the first mission to take images of Earth risingover the Moon. The KAGUYA successfully shot high-definition images ofthe Earth-rise showing an impressive image of the blue Earth which wasthe only floating object in pitch-dark space. These are the world'sfirst high-definition earth images taken from about 380,000 km awayfrom the earth in space.

The image taking was performed by the KAGUYA's onboard high definitiontelevision (HDTV) for space use developed by NHK. The moving imagedata acquired by the KAGUYA was received at the JAXA Usuda Deep SpaceCenter, and processed by NHK.

The satellite was confirmed to be in good health through telemetrydata received at the Usuda station.

* Note: we use the expression "Earth-rise" in this press release, butthe Earth-rise is a phenomenon seen only from satellites that travelaround the Moon, such as the KAGUYA and the Apollo space ship. TheEarth-rise cannot be observed by a person who is on the Moon as theycan always see the Earth at the same position.

Figure 1: Earth-rise image shot taken by the HDTV onboard the KAGUYAThis still image was cut out from a moving image (wide shot) taken bythe HDTV onboard the KAGUYA at 2:52 p.m. on November 7, 2007 (JST)then sent to the JAXA Usuda Deep Space Center.In the image, the Moon's surface is near the North Pole, and theArabian Peninsula and Indian Ocean can be observed on the Earth.

Figure 2: Earth-set image shot by the HDTV onboard the KAGUYAThis still image was cut out from a moving image (tele shot) taken bythe HDTV onboard the KAGUYA at 12:07 p.m. on November 7, 2007 (JapanStandard Time, JST,) then sent to the JAXA Usuda Deep Space Center.In the image, the Moon's surface is near the South Pole, and we cansee the Australian Continent (center left) and the Asian Continent(lower right) on the Earth. (In this image, the upper side of theEarth is the Southern Hemisphere, thus the Australian Continent looksupside-down.)

Monday, November 12, 2007

I have not seen the movie, "The Wonder of It All", but it sounds like I should.

Others have mentioned that they had and my thanks to Ron for hisreview as presented at The Space Review.

A snip below, but do go read.Let me know what you think if you have seen the movie.- LRK -

I think the more publicity of our past missions to the Moon the betterand hopefully we will see more to come.Where will the future take us?Nations have started back to the Moon and maybe we will see some spacetype commerce in the future as well.Here around Earth we now have communications satellites that werepredicted by Arthur C. Clarke and think nothing of it.- LRK -

Arthur C. Clarke, inventor of the concept of using geosynchronousorbit for communication satellites, once wrote that new ideas likethis pass through three stages:

* Stage 1: "It can't be done." * Stage 2: "It probably can be done, but it's not worth doing." * Stage 3: "I knew it was a good idea all along!"

When Clarke first published his idea of utilizing geosynchronous orbitin 1945, that idea was in Stage 1 because it was technicallyimpossible to do so at the time. Today, of course, that idea is inStage 3, and our television programming and phone calls routinely gothrough geosynchronous satellites.--------------------------

Clarke's First Law:"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something ispossible he is almost certainly right. When he states that somethingis impossible, he is very probably wrong."

Clarke defines the adjective 'elderly' as :"In physics, mathematicsand astronautics it means over thirty; in other disciplines, seniledecay is sometimes postponed to the forties. There are of course,glorious exceptions; but as every researcher just out of collegeknows, scientists of over fifty are good for nothing but boardmeetings, and should at all costs be kept out of the laboratory". (inProfiles of the Future.)

Clarke's Second Law:"The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venturea little way past them into the impossible."

Clarke's Third Law:"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

As the national interest slowly turns towards a deeper humanpenetration into space, settlements on the Moon with later expeditionsto Mars are becoming more of a reality show than political leadershipof the past 35 years would belie This growing interest in spacereceived a huge boost a decade ago with the landing of a small robotvehicle on Mars and from increasingly sophisticated Mars orbitalmapping spacecraft launched by NASA and later by ESA. An even greaterimpetus stimulated the public's appetite about our neighboring worldswhen NASA landed two golf-cart sized rovers on opposite sides of Marsin January 2004 which sent back thousands of photographs of theirtreks across the surface. They are still roving and transmittingpictures and data today, having recently survived one of the worstdust storms since their arrival on the planet almost four years ago.And the Vision for Space Exploration, as announced by President Bushin January 2004, is intended to "�extend [a] human presence across thesolar system, starting with a human return to the Moon by the year2020".

Although not greatly visible on the national public stage today asthey once were in the late 1960's and early 70's, an almost-forgottengroup of American heroes, the Apollo astronauts who traveled to theMoon, including the scant dozen of them who walked on the surface fortimes ranging from a few hours to three days, also returned to centerstage as actors about a decade ago in the cable TV series "From theEarth to the Moon". The crew of Apollo 13, again as actors, wasfeatured in a movie by that name; and a special TV documentary,"Failure Is Not an Option", narrated by Gene Kranz, the chief flightdirector during the Apollo period, recounted the excitement of each ofthe lunar missions with archival footage of actual events. Transcriptsof voice communications with the two Moonwalkers on each of the sixlanded missions, together with supplementary photographs, missionreports and related materials were provided by the Apollo LunarSurface Journal. Various books by and about the astronauts have alsobeen published.

But none of these media sources really bring to life the menthemselves who went to the Moon and walked on its surface. Two recentproductions have attempted to redress that situation: Jeff Roth's TheWonder of it All and Duncan Kopp and Chris Riley's In the Shadow ofthe Moon (see "Review: Two Shadows on the Moon", The Space Review,September 24, 2007). It is worthwhile in this discussion, however, todraw a few distinctions between the two because they approach theirsubjects differently.

I---It has become fashionable of late to critique and criticize NASA'scommunications efforts, especially given the belief by many that NASAhas not done a good enough job communicating the importance of spaceexploration to the general public. In the first of a two-partreport, Mary Lynne Dittmar argues that such criticism is focused toomuch on tactics rather than broader strategic concerns.http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1000/1

Exploding Moon myths: or why there's no race to our nearest neighbor---Recent and upcoming lunar missions, and even announcements ofproposed missions, have given the impression to some that there issome kind of new race to the Moon developing. Dwayne Day find theflaws the various explanations given for why these missions are alltaking place now.http://www.thespacereview.com/article/999/1

Why "Save Mars" is worth the effort---Some space advocates have been pressing Congress to drop language inthe House version of the NASA budget that would prohibit spending onany project exclusively intended to support human Mars exploration.Chris Carberry explains why what appears to be a minor provision inthe overall bill is so critical.http://www.thespacereview.com/article/998/1

Hillary Clinton's civil space policy---As the only presidential candidate of either party to release adetailed science policy, Hillary Clinton's approach to space policyhas come under scrutiny. Taylor Dinerman examines what Clinton said-- and did not say -- and its implications for the agency and itsexploration plans.http://www.thespacereview.com/article/997/1

Review: The Wonder of It All---As a new generation of space exploration ramps up, there is a renewedinterest in that original generation of space explorers. Ron Wellsreviews the lesser-known of two new documentaries about the Apolloastronauts and examines what sets it apart in its examination of theonly people to have walked on another world.http://www.thespacereview.com/article/996/1

Went to check on the shuttle landing and watch on NASA TV with RealMedia Player and the link would not connect, server limited.Went to Windows Media link and watched it with the VLC media player.http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

Retired Air Force Col. Pamela A. Melroy commands the STS-120 missionwhich took the Harmony Node 2 connecting module to the station. Melroy,a veteran shuttle pilot, is the second woman to command a shuttle.Marine Corps Col. George D. Zamka serves as pilot. The flight's missionspecialists are Scott E. Parazynski, Army Col. Douglas H. Wheelock,Stephanie D. Wilson and Paolo A. Nespoli, a European Space Agencyastronaut from Italy. Zamka, Wheelock and Nespoli are making their firstspaceflight.

During its stay at the station, which began Oct. 25, the STS-120 crewcontinued the on-orbit construction of the station with the installationof the Harmony Node 2 module and the relocation of the P6 truss.

The crew installed Harmony Oct. 26 and did four spacewalks at thestation. During the third spacewalk, the crew installed the P6 truss andsolar array pair in its permanent location outboard of the port truss.The fourth spacewalk was changed during the mission so that the crewcould repair a torn solar array on the P6 truss. Following thesuccessful repair work, the crew was able to fully deploy the solar array.

Discovery also delivered a new station crew member, Flight EngineerDaniel Tani.

STS-120 is the 120th shuttle mission and 23rd mission to visit the spacestation. The next mission, STS-122, is slated to launch in December.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and NHK (JapanBroadcasting Corporation) have successfully performed the world'sfirst high-definition image taking by the lunar explorer "KAGUYA"(SELENE,) which was injected into a lunar orbit at an altitude ofabout 100 km on October 18, 2007, (Japan Standard Time. Followingtimes and dates are all JST.)

The image shooting was carried out by the onboard high definitiontelevision (HDTV) of the KAGUYA, and it is the world's first highdefinition image data acquisition of the Moon from an altitude about100 kilometers away from the Moon.

The image taking was performed twice on October 31. Both were eight-fold speed intermittent shooting (eight minutes is converged to oneminute.) The first shooting covered from the northern area of the"Oceanus Procellarum" toward the center of the North Pole, then thesecond one was from the south to the north on the western side of the"Oceanus Procellarum." The moving image data acquired by the KAGUYAwas received at the JAXA Usuda Deep Space Center, and processed by NHK.

The satellite was confirmed to be in good health through telemetrydata received at the Usuda station.

Moon Images Shot by the Onboard HDTV of the KAGUYA

(1) North Pole Area(still image cut out from the first image shooting)http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2007/11/20071107_kaguya_e.html#pict01This is a still image taken out from the first moving image shootingwhen the KAGUYA flew from the northern area of the "Oceanus Procellarum"(*1) to the center of the North Pole.As the altitude near the North Pole is high, the angle of the comingsunlight was lower, thus the shade of the crater topography lookslong in the image.The moving image was taken at 4:07 a.m. on October 31, 2007 (JST) byeight-fold speed intermittent shooting (eight minutes is converged toone minute) from the KAGUYA, and the data was received at the JAXAUsuda Deep Space Center on the same day.

(*1) Oceanus Procellarum:The dark area on the Moon's surface called "ocean." It is located atthe left end of the northern hemisphere on the front side of the Moonwhen we look up at it from the Earth.

(2) The western side of the "Oceanus Procellarum"(cut out from the second image shooting)http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2007/11/20071107_kaguya_e.html#pict02This is a still image taken out from the second moving image shootingwhen the KAGUYA flew from the south to the north on the western sideof the "Oceanus Procellarum."The dark part on the right of the above image is the Ocean (OceanusProcellarum,) and the light area on the left is called the "highland."The moving image was taken at 5:51 a.m. on Oct. 31, 2007 (JST) byeight-fold speed intermittent shooting (eight minutes is converged toone minute) from the KAGUYA, and the data was received at the JAXAUsuda Deep Space Center on the same day.

(3) The west side of the "Oceanus Procellarum"(cut out from the second image shooting)http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2007/11/20071107_kaguya_e.html#pict03This is a still image taken out from the end part of the second movingimage taking.We can observe a crater called "Repsold," whose diameter is 107 km, atthe center on the near side of this image. The channel that crossesthis crater is called the "Repsold Valley," and its length is about180 km (equivalent to the distance between Tokyo and Shizuoka on theTokaido Line in Japan.) The shooting time was the same as the above (2.)

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Watch the Sci-Fi movies and the robots that think for themselves.Read the Sci-Fi books and do battle with robots run a muck.

Do you want to do all the work by yourself or will you use labor savingdevices?Will they be smart enough to do some of the assigned tasks by themselves?

Some have said, 'Send in the ROBOTS' well maybe not in those exact words.Still, there is a thirst to know our own mind and could we just hand offsome of the thinking to a robot.

You may have seen some of those 'HELPFUL' robots on TV or in the movies.Well maybe there was someone inside or maybe it was just computergraphics, BUT, could it ever be?

Some time back I read a short science fiction story about a roboticstechnician being sent out to a small asteroid where the mining robotsseemed to be doing a dance rather than cutting through rock. Afterchecking everything out at the mainframe computer that was in charge ofall the mining robots, the conclusion was that the system had been overloaded and that the mainframe computer couldn't make up its mind what todo next and was DRUMMING ITS FINGERS, that is,- the mining robots seemedto be doing a dance. :-)

A New Generation of Space RoboticsTo build and maintain the International Space Station, space walkingastronauts will work in partnership with a new generation of spacerobotics. The space shuttle's mechanical arm and a new space station armoperate both as "space cranes" to precisely maneuver large modules andcomponents and also as space "cherry pickers" to maneuver astronauts towork areas.

The shuttle's Canadian-built mechanical arm has been enhanced with a new"Space Vision System" (SVS) that helps the operator literally see aroundcorners. Tested on past space shuttle missions STS-74, STS-80 andSTS-85, the SVS uses video image processing and a series of markings onthe objects being maneuvered to develop a graphical laptop computerdisplay to assist the arm operator. It allows the shuttle arm to beoperated with great precision even when visibility is obstructed, andthe system was used operationally during the first assembly mission asAstronaut Nancy Currie, with her view partially obstructed, attached thefirst station component, the Zarya Control Module, to the secondcomponent, the Unity Connecting Module.

Listed below is a compilation of space robotics-related and generalpurpose robotics-related resources (web sites, ftp sites, gopher sites,newsgroups, etc.) available on the Internet. Although not 100 percentcomprehensive (no list of this type ever is complete), it does provide arepresenative sample of materials being offered on the 'net. If you haveany additions or corrections to the list, please email the sitewebmaster and let us know. The list is divided into the followingcategories:

Snip==============================================================http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_9000HAL 9000 (Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer) is a fictionalcharacter in Arthur C. Clarke's Space Odyssey saga. The novels, alongwith two films, begin with 2001: A Space Odyssey, released in 1968. Itwas ranked #13 on a list of greatest film villains of all on the AFI's100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains.

HAL is an artificial intelligence, the sentient on-board computer of thespaceship Discovery. HAL is usually represented only as his televisioncamera "eyes" that can be seen throughout the Discovery spaceship. Thevoice of HAL 9000 was performed by Canadian actor Douglas Rain. In thebook, HAL became operational on January 12, 1997 (1992 in the movie)[1]at the HAL Plant in Urbana, Illinois, and was created by Dr. Chandra. Inthe 2001 film, HAL is depicted as being capable not only of speechrecognition, facial recognition, and natural language processing, butalso lip reading, art appreciation, interpreting emotions, expressingemotions, reasoning, and, of course, chess.Snip

The Space Robotics Laboratory, led by Professor Yoshida, is dedicated tothe research and development of the robotic systems for space scienceand exploration missions. The lab has contributed to the EngineeringTest Satellite-VII (launched in 1997 for orbital robotics experiments)and "Hayabusa" asteroid sample-return probe (launched in 2003 andexpectied to return in 2010). Today one of our focus is put on themechanics and control of lunar exploration rovers. Technologies forremote planetary exploration (such as mapping and localization in theunstructured environment, rough terrain mobility, and teleoperation withtime delay) can also be applied to the robots for search and rescuemissions.

The Space Robotics Initiative is developing robots and their supporttechnologies (communication, manipulators, and multiple robotcoordination) for interplanetary exploration, space solar power stationconstruction and MRO, and solar-powered spaceflight.

Snip==============================================================[Reading some books about how the mind might work and what one mightconsider in trying to design a mechanical brain. - LRK -]Two books by Steve Grand;*"Growing Up with Lucy: How to Build an Android in Twenty Easy Steps"*Steve Grand; Paperback*"Creation: Life and How to Make It"*Steve Grand; Hardcover

Saturday, November 03, 2007

When we start landing on the Moon again, having found something worthdigging up and selling to space travelers or shipping back to Earth,there are sure to be discussions as to who has the right to dig, righthere, where I am standing.

Something not so far away is what is under the ocean, like gas, oil, andother hard to find minerals.Who has the right to drill here, right where my ship is anchored?- LRK -

The Senate moved closer to ratifying a sweeping international treatythat governs every aspect of maritime law, from ocean shipping todeep-sea mining. A 17-4 panel vote sent the Law of the Sea Treaty to thefull Senate, where it must win a two-thirds vote for ratification.

The treaty enjoys an odd mix of support from the Bush administration,top diplomats and military leaders, the oil industry andenvironmentalists. But it is opposed by conservatives who worry it wouldundermine U.S. sovereignty, and Senate critics repeatedly have blockedthe 25-year-old treaty, to which 155 nations have signed on.Snip--------------------------------------------------------------------

Who gets the taxes and fees involved in setting up and running anInternational governing body that says what you can and cannot do on theocean floor?Who will get the taxes and fees involved in setting up and running anInternational governing body that will determine how your Lunar wealthwill be distributed?Just a thought.

Look up, look down, look around, now where did I put that purse full ofgold, titanium, He3, gas, oil?Must get back to patching up my fish net, drag gear, under watersubmersible, and space tug.

How much did you say I had to pay that International Space Law Lawyer?

The United Nations Convention on *Law of the Sea* (UNCLOS), also calledthe *Law of* *the Sea* Convention and the *Law of the Sea Treaty* ( or*LOST* by its critics), *...*en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_on_the_*Law*_of_the_*Sea*- 68k

Snip

http://www.nss.org/legislative/NSS-LoST-WhitePaper.pdfRejecting the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST)AbstractThe United States Senate must reject the United Nations Convention onthe Law of the Sea (UNCLOS or Law of the Sea Treaty�LOST) because itplaces constraints on commercial development of untapped resources inunclaimed parts of the Earth's oceans. Ratification would set a badprecedent for the future development and settlement of outer space.While the National Space Society (NSS) has little quarrel with mostof LOST, Part XI establishes an international regime of approval,oversight, technology transfer, and taxation that interferes withprivate enterprise to an unprecedented and unnecessary degree.Because LOST is an all-or-nothing treaty, NSS urges the Senateand the President to renegotiate LOST or to continue complying withall of its provisions except Part XI. This paper details how'common heritage' treaties like LOST and the Moon Treaty do notjust discourage, but they actually inhibit, development of resourcesfrom the unexplored reaches of our world and solar system. Thesetreaties prevent space development in two ways. First, by stating thatresources in unexplored places are "the common heritage of all mankind,"they ensure that no one person will attempt to develop them privately.Second, resources necessary to the future health of our civilizationwill be subject to, as well as confiscated and redistributed by the UN,an organization with a long history of opposing the United States. Thevery future of our civilization will depend upon the resources andtechnologies gained by exploring new worlds. We should not restrictthat future through short-sighted decisions today. Accepting the UN'smandate on future resource development will mean a dimmer future for all-notjust the U.S. Free enterprise must be allowed to continue to expand, onthis world and others for the sake of our civilization.Snip==============================================================

Shortly after the spacewalk began, Parazynski rode the station�s roboticarm up to the damaged area of the array. He was secured in a footrestraint on the end of the Orbiter Boom Sensor System, or OBSS � theextension to the shuttle robot arm used for inspection of the orbiter�sthermal protection system.

After reaching the area of the damage, Parazynski went to workinstalling the cufflinks that were built by the crew. Once the fivecufflinks were in place, the crew inside then deployed the array half abay at a time until the array was fully deployed.

Here is an interesting piece by Christopher Riley, co-producer &assistant director of In the Shadow of the Moon. This statement caughtmy eye "We are now looking for footage to accompany interviews we areconducting with some of the 400,000 engineers and scientists who workedon Apollo. The resulting series for the Discovery Science Channel willair next summer - bringing a fresh insite (sic) into just how hard itwas to go to the Moon. Something we will perhaps never fully grasp untilwe attempt to do it again."

I thought this article on "Plundering the Moon" by Andrew Smith (authorof Moondust) would be of interest. The comments section on the originalpage covers a range of reader's opinions - some of them good and some ofthem (in my view) unbelievably daft!